From Dusty VHS Tapes to Blu-ray Bliss: A Hellraiser Collector’s Tale

Ahoy there, friends! Sean here from The Film Utopia Podcast.

At the time of reading this, both parts of our customary Film Utopia Halloween Special will be available for you to hear, and as is appropriate for the spooky season, it won't be a shocker to learn that our October/November show usually covers a long running horror franchise! This year we've produced a detailed retrospective review of the entire Hellraiser movie series, covering all 11 films, from the seminal 1987 Clive Barker written/directed original, right up to the recent David Bruckner helmed reboot from 2022. As usual, I’ve taken the opportunity to examine the physical media that is currently available/glaringly unavailable, and update my Blu-ray collection to plug the puzzle box-sized gaps on my shelves! Purely for research purposes you understand? Certainly not because I am a serial collector looking for an excuse to fill more shelf space!

Firstly though, let’s wind the clock back and look at some historical releases. I’ve been collecting movies since the VHS era, and that’s the format that I started my Hellraiser collection on. Specifically, retail copies Hellraiser (1987), Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), and an ex-rental copy of Hellraiser: Inferno (2000). If you’re old, like us, you’ll remember that Blockbuster Video used to sell off surplus copies of big-box rental tapes in those large square bins? It was one of those. Not long after Hellraiser: Inferno’s home media release, in 2004, Anchor Bay Entertainment delighted us fans with a gorgeous limited edition DVD collection of the first three movies plus a bonus disc loaded with extras, all housed within a cardboard cube designed to resemble the series’ staple MacGuffin, The Lament Configuration. Unlike my video cassettes, I still own it and treasure it to this day. Here in the UK, all but one of the subsequent Hellraiser movies each had a bog-standard DVD release at their time of release, including the Rick Bota directed Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), Hellraiser: Deader (2005), Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) – all of which I have previously owned and since sold off – and finally, Hellraiser: Judgment (2018) and Hellraiser (2022) (more on this one later). The omission in the UK DVD era was Dimension Films’ famous “we need to churn out another Hellraiser movie so we don’t lose the rights; Hellraiser: Revelations” (2011).

Upgrading to HD or UHD formats for the first few films has been easy. Not really a surprise given that the original trilogy is what most fans want in their collections, and deservedly so. With Arrow Video having previously released the original trilogy on Blu-ray as a limited edition boxed set called The Scarlet Box in 2015 and as a standard release in 2016 – which I own, followed by a Zavvi exclusive steelbook in 2017, they’ve already revisited the first three films plus adding Hellraiser: Bloodline into the mix for their recent limited edition Quartet of Torment and standard edition Tetralogy collections respectively on both HD and UHD formats. Awesome! Meanwhile, Lionsgate have nabbed the distribution rights for both Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) and Hellraiser: Judgment (2018) making them widely available on UK region B and USA region A Blu-ray for just a few quid each. But what if you want the three Rick Bota movies on HD or UHD? I mean, I don’t know why anyone would, but let’s pretend you do, or you’re a completionist like me! Well, in the USA, Miramax have a no-frills 4-movie collection on HD Blu-ray containing the three Bota movies plus Scott Derrickson’s Hellraiser V: Inferno. For us in the UK, our best bet is any of the number of German or Spanish region free HD Blu-rays that are available for each movie individually, but they’ll set you back more than you think and are bereft of special features.

And that finally brings us to the main reason I am writing this article: Where the hell (on earth) is the HD/UHD release of Hellraiser (2022)?! The Hellraiser reboot/remake/re-quel (whatever you want to call it) is widely regarded as, at worst, a decent film. It didn’t re-do the original 1987 film, nor did it re-adapt the original 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart, instead, it told a new lore-accurate Hellraiser tale to serve as a franchise re-start. One that didn’t betray the original mythology or feel like it was bastardizing the source material. In a world full of awful remakes and reboots, Hellraiser 2022 serves as a blueprint for how it should be done! Hellraiser 2022 is the first Hellraiser movie in a very long time that I was excited to own on physical media. I fantasize about a glorious special features-packed 4K UHD disc, presented in suitably beautiful yet horrific artwork packaging. But for now, at least, it does not appear to be forthcoming. Obviously, the movie being distributed by Hulu in its home country of the USA likely explains this unbelievably glaring physical media release omission, and for a similar reason, as Paramount picked up the international distribution rights, it explains why we in the UK at least have a DVD release of the film, which no doubt burns USA collectors even more. As a genre movie – with horror making up a huge portion of physical media collectors – it was a massive miss-fire from those involved to not put together a comprehensive HD/UHD disc to release simultaneously with streaming. Or, at the very least, soon after. We can only hope that it is simply part of the contract that the movie can’t be distributed on any other platform or media until after a predetermined time has passed, which is a real shame as I believe that decision will have likely impacted potential sales.

I hope you have all enjoyed the Halloween season! If you’d like to listen to our Halloween Special at Film Utopia, you can do so here.